Chapter 235: Useless Randy
"What?" Neil said.
"Nothing," Randy said immediately, sitting forward and picking up his cup again. "So. What are you planning to do next?"
Neil considered how much to share.
"A trip," he said. "A challenging one."
Randy looked at him and understood from the way he said it that no further detail was coming, and accepted this with the ease of someone who had learned when to probe and when not to.
"Right," he said.
He was quiet for a moment, and Neil could see the calculation behind his eyes, the particular look Randy got when his mind was working on angles.
"I wonder," Randy said slowly, "if there is a way to run another event before you go. Get some of the settlement’s lords together, put up some interesting odds..."
"You’re thinking about betting on me again," Neil said flatly.
"I’m thinking about providing entertainment to the settlement community," Randy replied, without any visible shame. "And also possibly about betting on you again, yes."
Neil shook his head.
"One thing," he said, changing direction. "Is there any treasure that could let me bring my domain along when I leave? All of it. The subjects, the buildings, everything."
Randy’s expression shifted into the thinking version of itself.
He was quiet for several seconds, genuinely considering.
"There are things that can move a domain quickly," he said finally. "Short range, temporary. But taking the whole thing with you on a journey like what you’re describing?" He shook his head slowly. "Nothing I have. Nothing I’ve seen in the settlement’s market."
Neil exhaled.
"Why don’t you ask that shadow woman?" Randy said.
"I can’t contact her," Neil said.
Randy spread his hands, which was his gesture for having reached the end of what he could offer.
"Then I’m afraid I’m not much help to you on that one."
Neil looked at him for a moment.
"So useless," he said.
Randy’s expression went flat.
"Excuse me?"
"Genuinely not useful at all for this particular thing," Neil said.
"I am the warden of this entire settlement," Randy said, with great dignity. "I have maintained order, managed attacks, kept your domain from being swarmed on multiple occasions during your ten-day disappearing act, and you are sitting in my office calling me useless."
"I said for this particular thing," Neil replied.
Randy opened his mouth, closed it, and pointed at the door.
Neil stood, and Magnar got up with him, and they left while Randy was still composing his response.
When he got back to the domain Jane and Ileana were sitting together near the small outdoor table, two cups between them, talking in the easy and unhurried way of people who had found a comfort with each other.
Not like two people navigating a difficult situation.
Like two people who had moved past the navigation and arrived somewhere genuine.
Neil stopped for a moment and looked at them from across the courtyard without going over immediately.
He took out his communication device and called Cynthia.
She answered on the second signal.
"You’re out," she said.
"5th Origin," he said. "Ready to go whenever you need."
A brief pause on her end.
"Good," she said, and it carried the warmth she didn’t usually put into words directly. "I’m finalising the approach timing now. We’ll be leaving very soon, I’ll send word when everything is set."
"One thing," Neil said. "Is there any way to bring the domain along? Some kind of spatial treasure?"
Another pause, different in quality.
"If I had something like that," she said, "I would have already arranged it."
"I know," he said. "Worth asking."
"I’ll keep looking," Cynthia said. "But prepare to leave without it if nothing surfaces. The timing won’t wait."
"Understood," he said. "Talk soon, teacher."
"Soon," she agreed, and ended the call.
Breakfast was the full version, Ray and Fay having apparently decided that the domain’s lord returning from a ten day evolution was sufficient occasion for the kind of meal that covered the whole table.
Everyone was there except Bob and Rob, who were still sleeping, and nobody suggested waking them.
Partway through the meal Jane set her cup down and looked across the table at Neil.
"My master is coming to the planet," she said. "I need to spend time with her before we leave. A day, maybe two. She is going to share the field comprehension with me."
Neil nodded.
He reached across and patted the top of her head once, which made her expression do the thing it did when she was trying not to react visibly to something.
"Be careful," he said. "Tell me if you need anything at all."
He leaned over and kissed her briefly, and Jane stood from the table with the particular composure of someone who was very focused on not showing how pleased they were about something in front of a full table of people.
She went into her building and closed the door behind her, and a few minutes later Neil felt the faint signature of a long-distance communication opening from inside.
The open area outside the settlement boundary was wide and flat and far enough from any other domain that it was appropriate for what he had in mind.
He brought Ileana and Magnar.
"Field first," he said.
Ileana stood a comfortable distance away with her arms folded, watching him.
He breathed out once.
Then he pushed outward.
The Field opened.
It didn’t expand gradually the way a barrier expanded, it simply was, present and total, spreading from him in every direction at once and sealing into a sphere that stretched several kilometres across.
The interior of it changed immediately.
The air went dark, the natural light of the day swallowed by the deep and heavy shadow that was the Field’s nature, and through that shadow dark flames moved without burning anything, spreading through the space in slow and vast currents that followed no wind because the Field did not consult the wind.
His awareness expanded with it.
Every cubic metre of the space inside registered in his perception as clearly as the hand in front of his face, the positions and movements of everything within the sphere present to him all at once without any effort required.
Ileana, standing on the edge of it, felt the pressure immediately.
Even at that distance, with him actively trying to keep the Field’s weight from landing on her, the edges of it were enough to make her shift her footing, the oppressive quality of the space pressing against her from the boundary outward.
He pulled the weight back further, focused the intensity inward, and watched her expression ease.
Inside the Field his strength was different.
Not enhanced in the simple way that a treasure enhanced it, but different in quality, the energy responding to his intentions faster and with less resistance than it did in open air, the dark flames moving exactly where he wanted them without the usual gap between intent and expression.
He ran through it several times, expanding and collapsing, adjusting the weight distribution, finding where the edges of control were and then extending them further.
By the fourth iteration the Field opened and held with the ease of something that had found its natural form.
He let it collapse and looked at Ileana.
"Your turn," he said.
She uncrossed her arms.
Her Field was different in every way that a Field could be different.
Where his had been a sphere of darkness and suppression, hers was growth, literal and immediate, the ground inside the boundary producing green in every direction as plants came up from the soil faster than plants had any reason to come up, dense and reaching and alive in a way that was not natural growth accelerated but something else entirely.
The space inside her Field felt alive rather than oppressive.
Things within it moved slightly toward her, drawn by whatever principle her nature expressed as a Field, and the skill density she could operate inside it was immediately obvious to anyone standing nearby, the number of things she could do simultaneously within that space vastly larger than what she could do in open air.
Neil stepped into the edge of it and felt the pressure on his end.
It did not affect him the way it would affect someone at a lower origin, his own density absorbing most of it without effort, but the quality of her Field was unmistakable even through that resistance.
She was at the 4th Origin Mythic Class and her Field reflected it completely.
They worked through the afternoon and into the early evening, alternating, pushing proficiency further with each iteration, the open land around them marked by the evidence of what they were doing, the ground on Neil’s side scorched and dark, the ground on Ileana’s side green and dense with new growth where there had been bare earth that morning.
When the sky began to darken properly and the settlement lights started to show in the distance, they finally stopped.
Ileana was flushed with the specific warmth of extended effort, her hair slightly loose from its arrangement, and she looked at the field of plants she had produced over the course of the day with the expression of someone assessing their own work honestly.
"Better than this morning," she said.
"Much better," Neil confirmed.
She looked sideways at him and the small smile appeared.
They turned back toward the settlement together, Magnar falling into step between them with the comfortable ease of a familiar who considered himself the appropriate center of any group he walked with.
...
The domain was warm and settled when they came back through the gate, the evening meal smell coming from the kitchen, Leon on his post, the quiet productive sounds of the domain in its evening rhythm.
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